"Why not?” Ovechkin replied earlier in the day when asked why he would agree to two hours of sign and smile. “It’s good stuff for me. People are going to recognize me and shake my hand. It’s easy.”

Matt Sekeres doesn't just call him a hockey player, he calls him a rock star. It's easy to forget that he's only 24 years old, since he works the media so well sometimes. In addition to signing a few autographs, he was promoting the NHL parcipating in the 2014 Olympics in Russia to the media.

You get a recap! I don't always recap games, so please do enjoy them when they appear on this blog.

The Canucks came out to this game looking terrible.

Bobby Ryan's goal comes from a bad turnover made by Shane O'Brien. There was no shots on goal until they went on the powerplay 13 minutes into the first, which was Getzlaf's 1st tripping penalty of the night (he got more later). Luongo bailed them out multiple times during this game on shots from Perry and Bobby Ryan.

The Henrik scores on their 1st even strength shot at 17: 07, which was their second shot of the night.

The Canucks then go back to the 2nd period sucking. Getzlaf scores to make it 2-1 midway through the period. Bullsh-t chant errupts from GM Place.

Shane O'Brien decides to take matters in his own hands, literally. Fight! The helmet comes off, the girls in Vancouver swoon, it energizes the crowd and the team so it's all around pretty effective. Darcy Hordichuk attempts to fight Parros later in the period, but ultimately fails at fightning. Hordichuck proves he's useless. Would you like a ticket to the press box?

2 minutes in to the 3rd period Bernier wrists a goal in on Hiller. TSN announces that the goal is Bernier's 9th of the year. I ask myself: 9th? Seriously? Must have gotten most of them at the beginning of the year because those hands of stone haven't scored recently. The crowd is "Woo!"-ing. I don't think the fans at GM Place realize that the Woo is a Hurricane thing (Ric Flair). Then became a Penguin thing from The Pensblog. I don't mind we if adopt the Woo, but you have to give credit where credit is due.

The Canucks play the 3rd period with jump. Finally there is exciting hockey, can we sustain the 2-2 tie to go to overtime? My flatmate K sits besides me and says it's too bad that we don't have Wellwood for the shootout, then Bieksa picks a terrible time to take a penalty with 5 minutes left in the game.

A quick pass from Calder to Koivu and the Ducks are up 3-2. The Canucks try to tie it up but Hiller makes some ridiculous saves.

The Canucks have now just lost to the worst teams in both the East and the West. Next up is the Caps, who according to TSN are in Vancouver and had their rookie dinner tonight, should be an exciting one.

The Province reported today that Wellwood would be back to a healthy scratch again tomorrow night against the Ducks. An exerpt: "At this rate, Wellwood will be joining ex-Canuck Byron Ritchie in Switzerland faster than you'd think." Apparently they can get away this type of journalism if they post it under their White Towel section. After coming back from being a healthy scratch, Wellwood did not inspire last night against the Kings.

Instead Hordichuck will draw in for Wellwood, which is a better move as the Ducks are a more physical team than the Kings are. Though when has Hordichuck really been physical?

Surprised? I was a little too as they just kinda crept up into 1st place in the West there. Sure, that Calgary hasn't played as many games yet, but The Royal Half is pretty pleased with it.

So the Canucks are on an 8 game homestand and have now won two games in a row. The game against Atlanta, the Canucks just crushed the Thrashers.The game against Minny on Saturday, well they did have really good offense and luckily had the pleasure of a the Wild's backup goalie Harding, to play against.

And although we may all be happy about the win, there were two things wrong about the game. The first is the faceoff's, which the Canucks came out winning only 20 out of 68 draws equalling a 29% success rate. That sh-t needs to improve. The other was that Luongo, although he stopped a ton of shots, he looked shaky at times. Like when I was watching, I didn't have that feeling of full confidence that he was going to always make the save. The Wild also outshot the Canucks 41 to 29, but I think that stat is tied into the faceoff win rate, so hopefully we'll see them both improve tomorrow night.

On a positive note about our team, Henrik is now only 3 points back from Joe Thornton in points, tied with Marian Gaborik at 41 points. Henrik also notched his 500th career point on Saturday night, all of which for the Canucks

The Canucks have already beat the Kings twice this season, once in LA winning 2-1 in a shootout and the other at home winning 4-1. We won't see them again still April 1st where teams will be struggling to get those last points heading in to the playoffs. The Canucks are just sitting 4 games above .500, but are in 10th spot in the Western Conference. These days just to move up 3 points in the race it feels like it takes 10 games to do it.

The Canucks need to come out strong again tonight, and be as offensive as we've seem them in the past two games. This LA team is gonna look good compared to a couple of season ago, and what's scary is that they are gonna look good for the next few seasons.

So after watching last night's win over Minnesota, I have come to some conclusions about what the Canucks use as 'their song'. You can see the whole playlist for every song being played at GM Place whether it be during the warmup, during the game or the intermissions here at DJ Dave's blog on Canucks.com.

Now the Canucks actually have been trying to make the music at GM Place better. Of course not everyone will love every song they play, but after many complaints the Canucks began to make the requests more fan interactive. So if you go the Canucks website, you can suggest the 'type of music' you prefer to be played at games or request specific songs that you want to hear. How many Canuck fans who attend games will actually use these channels to voice their opinion on music seems pretty low to me, but hey it's there.

The player intro song that the players skate out to currently is U2's 'Where The Streets Have No Name' which has been brought back after many many requests by fans. This I like. This song has such a history with fans who attend games. The feeling you get, especially if you have attended a playoff game and heard it, it sends shivers down your spine.

But what really chaps me these days is the goal song and song that they play at the end of the game if the team wins.

The current goal song is Green Day's 'Holiday' which is terrible. This needs to change. It's worse than last year's Crowd Chant by Joe Satriani. Now I watch a lot of hockey and I'm not saying that there aren't worse ones out there, example Chicago's choice: Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis. But maybe this song may only elicit a feeling of anger out of opposing teams, ie any Canucks fan who watched last year playoffs, so perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if you were a Hawks fan? The problem with the Green Day song is that I don't feel like I have that connection with it. Like when the Canucks score a goal, it really just doesn't embody the same feeling that a goal elicits.

The other problem I have with the music is that after a Canucks win at GM Place, DJ Dave playe the Star Wars Theme when the players spill off of the bench onto the ice. As with the goal song, this song just doesn't have the right feel. It is not peppy enough, not enough emotion, and doesn't really make the crowd at GM Place want to cheer for the win that the team just had.

I'm not good with suggestions on what to replace the songs with, but I do think that whoever is in charge of choosing the appropriate goal song or exit song should rethink the songs that we are currently using. Perhaps look to what other teams use and then poll Canucks fans to choose one? Or maybe like in Chicago before Chelsea Dagger was chosen as their goal song, they tried a few different ones out as a player goal song until they decided on Chelsea Dagger.

So last night I was out with a few friends catching the Vancouver/Nashville game and the Canucks video for the BC Children's Hospital came up in discussion. If you haven't seen the video of it, it's on Canucks.com here. Each player has a card that has a word or a part of a message that they hold up. It's cute, there's no denying that.

But someone I was with had an interesting opinion on the video. The video was made for the BC Children's hospital, whose majority of patients are made up of kids. KIDS. Kids who may or may not be able to read (the really young ones), so a lot of the intention of the video will be lost on them. Would a quick trip to visit the patients in hospital not have been more effective? The visits from the players is what the kids look forward to, a video is not quite the same. Perhaps this was done just because they didn't want to go because of H1N1 at this time (complete speculation) and maybe they will also make a visit to the hospital in addition to the video later in the season.

What do you think? If you were at BC Children's would the video be good enough or would you have preferred a visit from the players?

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